USA Health Magazine: A New Beginning

By Carol McPhail
[email protected]

This story was originally featured in the Summer 2026 edition of the USA Health magazine.

For Monica Helton, 61, of Monroeville, the decision to have bariatric surgery stemmed from a multitude of ills – painful arthritis and fibromyalgia, sleep apnea, blood clots and severe fluid buildup caused by undiagnosed heart failure. Her weight aggravated it all.

“I never had COVID, but the pandemic almost killed me because of the lockdown,” said Helton, a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama. When the pandemic hit, she was working as a history instructor and library assistant at Coastal Community College in Thomasville.

When Helton shifted to working remotely, she began moving less, which exacerbated a lifelong struggle with her weight and arthritis. The pounds started to add up, compounded by lymphedema as fluid collected in her legs. “It became this vicious cycle,” she recalled. “I didn’t know it, but I was going into heart failure.”

One day, she found herself gasping for breath and called 911 from her apartment in Monroeville. An ambulance transported her 90 minutes to USA Health University Hospital in Mobile, where she stayed for two weeks and was treated for multiple blood clots in her lungs.

Too weak to walk after discharge, she was admitted to a skilled nursing unit at a retirement facility. Her weight had increased to 504 pounds.

For the next year, Helton’s health slowly improved. A nurse gave her the contact information for bariatric surgeon Danuel Laan, M.D., FACS, FASMBS, at USA Health Providence Hospital. An Alabama native, Laan trained in general surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and bariatric surgery at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Helton watched his video about weight-loss surgery on USA Health’s website, where Laan quotes C.S. Lewis: “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

She decided to set up an appointment, knowing she would need to be transported to Mobile by ambulance.

“They took me into his office on a stretcher because I was still bed-bound,” she said. “That’s how bad it was.”

Helton met Laan, along with dietitian Lorie Beasley, RDN, and bariatric surgery coordinator Heidi Knowles. “When I told them I did not know what to expect, that I thought I might get a lecture, Dr. Laan, Heidi and Lorie just looked at me with so much compassion in their eyes,” she recalled.

Laan recommended sleeve gastrectomy, also known as gastric sleeve surgery, a laparoscopic procedure that removes 80% of the stomach, leaving the patient with a long, tubular stomach shaped like a banana. Patients who have this surgery typically lose 50% to 60% of their excess body weight.

“The surgery works in two ways,” Laan explained. “It makes the patient feel full when they eat but also decreases a hormone that promotes hunger.”

This sounded promising to Helton, who had struggled with her weight since she was a teenager, constantly fending off headaches and a “horrible screaming hunger.” Over the years, she had tried everything – fad diets, medications, you name it – but the weight always came back, and more.

Prior to surgery and her new journey, Laan asked Helton to lose some weight to make the operation safer. “At her weight, even having anesthesia could be dangerous,” he said. “To compound this, she had serious medical problems such as atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure and a history of blood clots that all made surgery more dangerous for her.”

Helton embraced the challenge, though, and began working with Beasley, the dietitian, to change her eating habits and lifestyle – ultimately losing 95 pounds before surgery. “Monica made all of the changes we asked her to. Prior to surgery, she was healing herself,” Laan said. “Through the years, I have developed a sense of which type of people will have success. Monica had a special self-determination that has led to her success.”

Helton underwent a sleeve gastrectomy on Oct. 29, 2024, at Providence Hospital. Then came months of physical therapy and treatments to reduce the fluid in her body. As of May 2026, Helton lost a total of 302 pounds, putting her only 12 pounds away from her goal weight of 190.

It wasn’t always easy. There were emotional lows, such as when Helton underwent a hysterectomy and lost both her parents in the span of a month. But she never gave up.

Laan and the team have been with her every step of the way, encouraging her to stay the course when her weight loss plateaued temporarily.

“After surgery, our goal is to support our patients so they can reach their goals. This involves a lifelong relationship walking beside them,” Laan said. “Monica has had tremendous success. She is committed to a healthy lifestyle. She eats a nutritious diet, exercises and monitors her health.”

At an appointment with Laan in February at the USA Health Center for Comprehensive Weight Loss in Mobile, Helton maneuvered her way into the waiting room using a walker, with her cousin at her side. She came to discuss a referral to a plastic surgeon who can remove the extra skin that now weighs heavily on her body.

“I hope that if I am approved for plastic surgery to remove extra skin and lymphedema masses, I will be able to use a cane and give up the walker,” she said, adding that the loose skin on her body is painful.

Helton reports that she walks the halls at her apartment building regularly and is finally free of the insatiable hunger that haunted her most of her life. “Now I can eat a small amount of nutritious food, and I’m full,” she said. “I cannot tell you how happy that makes me, because I love raw carrots, oranges, and tuna salad. I love whole grain bread and I love plain, fat-free yogurt.”

She enthusiastically shares her favorite recipe for sweetening plain fat-free Greek yogurt with fruit and two teaspoons of sugar-free French vanilla pudding mix.

Helton said she is grateful to her healthcare team and her friends and family who have supported her during her journey without judgment. “As a society, we treat obesity as a moral failing. We think, ‘You deserve it. You have it coming to you.’ But it’s far more complex than that,” she said. “You don’t know what someone is going through. You have no idea what physical problems they have that exacerbate their condition.”

Once plagued by shame over her weight, Helton is willing to share her journey to encourage other people who are struggling. “If talking about my story can help others, I’m going for it,” she said. “I’m not going to be ashamed anymore.”